


You're The Key

by strawberryskylines



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Height difference, Love, M/M, Model!Harry, Photographer!Louis, Romance, Tattoos, i forgot liam, lots of tattoo feels, oh no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-09 01:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberryskylines/pseuds/strawberryskylines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is beautiful and sometimes Louis feels like a creep.</p><p>Or, the one where Louis needs a subject for his photography class and Harry is more than happy to be his model.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're The Key

He sits towards the front of the room, and a little ways to the right.

He’s been late to class every single day of the school year so far, but he’s always the first one in the locker room and always the last one to leave when it comes to his football team. His pen has nervous bite marks on the end of it, and scratches rhythmically against his notebook paper when he scrawls out his notes for the day. Sometimes he uses black ink, sometimes it’s blue and there was that one time where he had to borrow a pen from the girl who sits beside him and he turned his assignment in, the words on the page glittery pink.

He likes to raise his hand a lot and participate during lessons, even though he never knows any of the answers. Sometimes he smokes in the abandoned stairwell near the back of the school that no one uses anymore for one reason or another. Sometimes he takes girls back there, too.

He works in a bakery, and sometimes he’s got a smudge of leftover flour on his cheek, and sometimes he smells sweet, like sugar. Sometimes he brings the yummy pastries he’s baked himself to class and deals them out to his friends like drugs. Sometimes he’s got crumbs on his shirt and sometimes the material rides up when he stretches, leans back in his chair and yawns, flashing the ivory flesh of his abdomen.

He’s got curly hair that sometimes reaches down to graze the skin of his neck, and sometimes is looped girly-like over his ear; dimpled cheeks that play peek-a-book and only appear if you make him laugh really, really hard. These everlasting emerald gems for eyes that make boys and girls alike swoon with just one look, and lips so kissable and so intoxicating and so deliciously pink that they should come with a warning label. Seriously.

Harry is beautiful, and sometimes Louis feels like a creep.

Well, he feels like a creep all the time whenever he uses the entire length of his history class to glance at Harry every now and again – okay, maybe not exactly _glance_ but that’s not even the point. The point is that Louis is tired of playing the game of I’m-going-to-watch-you-from-the-back-of-the-room-every-day-while-you-carry-on-not-knowing-I-exist with the boy.

“Stop staring.” Zayn breaks Louis away from his Harry-trance, tapping his pen persistently on the other boy’s desk. He looks nice today, with his quiff all done up and standing on end, his tattoos out on display because he rolled up the sleeves to his shirt. His eyelashes are long – like, abnormally long – and they frame the hazel of his eyes. And maybe if Zayn wasn’t his best mate, and maybe if Louis wasn’t completely gone for Harry, Louis just might be in love with Zayn. Maybe.

Louis snaps his notebook closed, because it’s full of blank white pieces of paper and since when did he ever take notes? Also, it’s the last five minutes of class, which their teacher has labeled as ‘free time’ just so he can take a personal phone call outside of the classroom. Sadly, he still left some notes on the board that they’re all supposed to copy, but fuck it. Not like he’s going to actually study them if he does write them down.

He pushes the book to the far corner of his desk before he uses his intertwined fingers as a headrest, motioning with his eyes towards the front of the room. He doesn’t need to say any names, Zayn already knows. “D’you think he’d say yes?”

A little distractedly because he’s scribbling something down in his own paper, Zayn asks, “Say yes to what?”

“My _project_.” Louis stresses the last word on purpose because he’s been babbling about his photography class’s end-of-the-school-year project since, like, the first day of school. Zayn should be able to recite the instructions to the assignment in his sleep as well as Louis can. The project isn’t that big of a deal, really. All he was really assigned to do was pick a test subject or model and direct them to get some pretty good shots, worthy enough of getting an A. Should be pretty easy.

“How should I know?” Zayn gives up on putting some kind of effort into note taking and goes back to doodling big-headed characters in the margins of his notebook. “Why don’t you stop eye-fucking him and ask him?”

And Louis cringes because _eye-fuck_ sounds dirty and makes him feel even weirder. He’d prefer _examine closely while getting these baby butterflies behind his navel_ because it sounds better, prettier. Then he sniffs determinedly, “Maybe I will.”

Zayn snorts, causing the girl in front of them – who’s widely known for being anal and must’ve been actually copying down the notes on the board – to turn around and give them both haughty looks with her nose up in the air. The dark haired boy just flips the finger and snickers a bit at her offended expression when she turns back around. Speaking to Louis again, he says, “No, you won’t.”

“I _will_.”

“You won’t.” Zayn fires back knowingly. Lowering his voice so it’s like a secret he’s telling, he says, “You’re scared.”

Pursing his lips in an annoyed fashion, Louis looks back over at the boy in question. Harry’s hair is pushed up and out of his face, and he’s turned around in his seat, facing the back of the room. He has a friend who sits directly behind him, some blonde kid named Nate or Niall or something similar to that and the two are talking animatedly. When Harry throws his head back and laughs raucously at something the boy says, heat pools in Louis’ stomach. Returning his gaze back at Zayn, Louis states firmly, “I’ll ask him today.”

Zayn raises his eyebrows and rolls his eyes hard but never looks up from his doodles, dryly agreeing, “Sure.”

Louis wants to punch him or yell at him or do something because he _will_. He promises he will because he’s been steering clear of Harry due to his lack of social skills for years now, but that’s all going to end.

Today.

\--

He waits until lunch time, because isn’t that the best time to do things? In study hall he’ll just get in trouble for talking, and during class is a no-no because everyone will stare and most likely gossip, so lunch time is perfect.

All he has to do is get up, cross the expanse of the room over to where Harry sits with his group of friends, and talk to him. It’s going to be easy as pie. Y’know, when he gets up out of his chair, which he still has yet to do.

“Go on, then.” Zayn prompts him with a smirk on his attractive, attractive face, because Louis may or may not be stalling. He’s already done the usual ‘but I have to eat lunch first, can’t talk to Harry on an empty stomach’ and even went as far as ‘you know what, he looks like he’s having good conversation over there. I should probably leave him be’. Zayn is not having it though, because they’ve only got ten minutes left of the lunch period. He scolds Louis for being ‘all talk and no action’. Tapping his finger on his wrist like there’s a watch there –when there’s really not – Zayn says, “Time is wasting. Go get your man.”

Louis scrunches up his face and has half a mind to stick his tongue out at the doe-eyed boy because he would _never_ torment Zayn like this if Zayn was nervous about talking to a boy. Which has happened before, actually. If Louis really wanted to tease him, all he really has to do is whisper ‘Liam’ very, very quietly, and he can easily reduce the dark-haired boy to a sputtering, blushing mess. He sets that aside for later, though. He’s got more important issues at hand. Standing up, he announces, “I’m going.”

Zayn just raises his eyebrows expectantly.

The pair of friends have a momentary stare down before Louis exhales deeply. He can do this. He can. All he’s doing is talking to a boy. Yes, the boy is extremely gorgeous and immensely adorable and makes Louis want to melt into a puddle of goo, but he’s a boy nonetheless. Louis’ chatted up and with boys before, so he can do this. He can.

Hopefully.

The walk from Zayn and Louis’ lunch table to Harry’s lunch table should take about thirty seconds, forty five tops if he has to duck and weave if someone is blocking the way. But it takes Louis a whole five minutes this time because he keeps doing this thing where he’ll start walking towards the table, internally chicken out, internally reprimand himself, and start all over again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

But he gets there, eventually, to see Harry sitting facing away from him, lips quirked up in the beginnings of a laugh because of whatever the blonde boy next to him just said. Now is his chance.

“H-Harry?” Louis tries the name out on his lips, forms the letters with his mouth and tries to raise his voice a bit higher over the noise. It doesn’t work out too well and the boy doesn’t hear him because he’s still laughing at whatever it is his blonde friend said. Determined to be noticed, Louis swallows and taps the boy on his shoulder a few times. Leaning down just a bit so he can speak right into the boy’s ear, he says again, “Harry.”

The boy in question startles a bit, tensing his shoulders before he turns in his seat. The expression on his face is annoyed, with his eyebrows digging over his nose and his mouth in a tight line, but when he sees Louis standing there, he softens up. His voice sounds like gravel mixed with manliness. And sex. Louis tries not to swoon. “You’re Louis, right? El’s friend?”

Louis nods. Of course Harry would know Eleanor, and only know of him _because_ of Eleanor. Because Eleanor is the most popular girl at their school at the moment, and she runs in the same circles that Harry does. Louis and Eleanor’s friendship goes way back, like back when they were running around in his back yard playing Tarzan and Jane and space explorers. It’s not really anyone’s fault that suddenly, as they got older and met more people, Eleanor got popular and Louis didn’t. It just happened. But sadly, that seems to be the only reason people know who he is these days. “Mhm.”

Harry smiles, and turns slightly, leaning into his blonde friend and whispers something inaudible in his ear. The boy whispers something back before looking up at Louis and giving him a toothless smile. Louis tries to return it, but then the blonde boy is already paying attention to the lunch in front of him. Harry says, “Well, what can I do for you, Louis?”

“I have this - this thing. A project. In my photography class.” Louis starts, and suddenly it feels like there’s a brick lodged in his stomach. Harry is looking at him with intensity, green eyes ablaze and cherry lollipop lips parted. And Louis rushes out the last sentence before he vomits. “Could you … could you be my subject?”

Harry’s brow raises and one corner of his mouth turns upward, one kissable corner of his mouth that Louis has to literally drag his eyes away from. “Like a model?”

Nodding feverishly but at the same time not trying to look desperate, Louis confirms, “Mhm.”

“Yeah,” Harry says and wow, it didn’t take him that long to make up his mind. He smiles, all bright and white, and nods his head. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

“G-great.” Louis stumbles, stutters around his words, because is this really happening? Is this real life? Did Harry Styles just agree to be the subject for his project? If this is a joke, Louis thinks this would be a great time for the Punk’d team to come out with their cameras all in his face. Instead of looking around for a hidden camera crew, he manages, “Thanks. Thanks so much.”

And then Harry is asking, “Your number?”

And Louis’ heart thumps wildly because _what?_ “What?”

“Well, I need your number so we can be in contact.” Harry says it a bit slowly, with his eyes all wide like he’s afraid he spooked Louis. Furrowing his eyebrows together in the cutest fashion, he finishes, “So I can text you for the details?”

“Oh, right.” Louis says. Running trembling fingers across his fringe and mentally scolding himself for acting like such a wuss, he quickly rattles off his digits to Harry, who’s punching them into his mobile as Louis talks.

“Alright, got it.” Harry saves the number and then shoves his phone back into his pocket. He looks up at Louis through the fan off his eyelashes, a loose smile on his face. Voice soft, he says, “I’ll text you later.”

Louis hopes Harry can’t hear how loud his heart is beating. “Okay.”

Harry lifts two fingers in a wave goodbye. “Bye, Louis.”

Retreating back the way he came, Louis says, “Bye, Harry.”

\--

And then later that same day, while they’re both sitting underneath the bleachers to escape from Coach Cowell and his grueling gym class drills, Zayn with a cigarette wedged between his lips, Louis says, “He said yes.”

“I know.” Zayn answers, inhaling chemicals and exhaling smoke, because he _does_ know. After Louis had come back to their lunch table, he was babbling nonstop about how Harry had agreed and how Harry had asked for his number and HarryHarryHarryHarry. “And, wow, Lou, only took you like, what? Three years to talk to him?”

“He said yes.”

“Yeah, I _know_.” Zayn furrows his eyebrows in an annoyed fashion and he rests a hand on Louis’ knee, jostling the boy a little. Louis barely flinches. “You okay?”

“He said _yes_.”

Zayn removes his hand and just rolls his eyes, taking another drag of his cigarette. “You are such a teenage girl.”

\--

_When are we meeting and where?_

Harry’s text comes in at exactly around noon on Saturday while Louis is at the studio he’s going to use for the shoot. He decided to just prep the set now so that it will just already be ready so that he can spend the entirety of Sunday running around like a chicken without a head whilst searching for the perfect outfit. He _has_ to look presentable, no if, ands or buts about it.

_Tomorrow afternoon, maybe around 1. That okay with you? And it’s this studio that’s about a ten minute walk from school._

Then he makes sure to list the address and the exact street names and he even is kind enough to name all the buses Harry could take if he doesn’t want to walk.

A couple minutes later, while Louis is in the middle of sweeping up the dust covered floors of the studio, his mobile beeps in his pocket with a text message:

_Okay, thanks. Can’t wait. : )_

Louis’ about to reply, but then his phone chirps again, announcing the arrival of another text.

_This doesn’t happen to be a nude shoot, does it?_

This is the moment where Louis is thankful that he and Harry aren’t Skyping or anything because the sound he made just then would not be considered manly in the slightest, and he’s blushing so red and so hot that someone could fry an egg on his cheekbones.

Swallowing hard, and pushing _all_ thoughts of naked-Harry out of his brain, he types out:

_No, clothing is required._

Several minutes later, Harry texts back with:

_Shame. : / but okay._

And Louis really, really tries not to blush, but dammit. It happens anyway.

The studio isn’t that big, really. Just a room that has four standard walls that are colored a bland white, but the west wall has two large windows that look out over the town, so that’s a plus. The studio is actually owned by the school since it was voted by the students and some parents from the PTA to become a legit class. The only reason the studio is in an entirely different building is because of a sad lack of funding. But, it’s what they have, and teachers and students alike help take care of it. Students are allowed to have the room for photography class assignments only and have to have a permission slip signed by their teacher and everything.

After the sweeping comes the mopping and then he’s dusting and rearranging the throw pillows on the couch and testing out the stereo and cleaning all his equipment.

He just buzzes around the space like a busy worker bee, and it like the second he slows down and blinks, it’s one in the afternoon on Sunday and someone’s knocking on the door.

**\--**

“Hi.” Harry greets him the moment he flings open the door with dimpled cheeks and luminescent eyes, and there’s a hitch in Louis’ breathing because, _wow_. It’s not like the younger boy is decked out in a suit and tie or some other fancy getup, and if he was, that would be a reasonable excuse for Louis to be tongue tied. He’s just wearing a basic white tee with the sleeves rolled up, dark jeans and a green beanie – it matches his fucking _eyes_ – and a bag slung over his shoulder but, goodness gracious. He even makes simple look beautiful.

“Hey.” Louis tries his best to hide the blush that’s daring to creep up his neck, but he’s not sure if his attempts are useful. He doesn’t look bad, he decides. He’s wearing dark trousers with the cuffs rolled up to show off some ankle skin and a blazer and a simple T-shirt. He definitely doesn’t look bad. But Harry makes him self-conscious, anyway. “You came.”

Harry nods once and doesn’t wait for a further invitation. He brushes past Louis, smelling heavily of cologne, walking into the room, setting his bag down near the couch and turning with a smirk on his lips. “Did you think I wasn’t going to or something?”

Louis rolls his shoulders in a shrug as he closes and makes sure to lock the door. “I don’t know. You’re pretty popular so maybe you had other plans.”

“I’m not _that_ popular.” Harry rolls his eyes, and then reaches up to tug off the beanie. When he does, his curls spring free and fall down over his forehead. Then he does this thing where he shakes his head so his curls fly this way and that, and then he pushes it all to one side so all his hair swoops but still has that I-just-got-out-of-bed look to it. Louis tries not to die. Looking at Louis again, the other boy says, “And are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to be photographed by you for anything.”

“Stop, I’m blushing.” And Louis has to flick his head awkwardly to let some of his fringe fall into his face because, he really _is_ blushing, all flaming cheeks and lips caught in between his teeth. He’s such a teen. Zayn was right.

He’s got Two Door Cinema Club playing on the stereo to lighten up the atmosphere and fill in awkward silences, should there be any. The windows on the west side of the room are open, letting the orange afternoon light stream bright through the glass pane, because lighting is everything. All the equipment is set up at their proper angles and ready to go. The couch pushed against the north wall has its pillows fluffed.

“So, what do I do?” Harry stands a few feet away from the camera, his hands a little bit awkward like he doesn’t know what to do with them. He bites a little nervously at the corner of his bottom lip, and his right foot is raised up so it can scratch at the calf of his left leg. Then he motions over to where he had set down his bag. “I brought a change of clothes just in case. Should I change?”

“No, no.” Louis waves the suggestion away with a flick of his wrist because of two reasons. One being that Louis seriously can’t promise that he’ll be able to handle himself in seeing Harry in various states of undress (because there are no changing rooms in the studio). Two is the simple fact that the white t-shirt of his is fitting him just right around the collarbone and bicep area and it’d be a right shame if his change of clothes hid those treasures from view. “You look fine just like that.”

“Okay.” Harry nods, curls bouncing. He takes a deep breath and gestures to the area around him. “Just stand here?”

“Yeah.” Louis grabs his camera of its tripod and balances it carefully in his hands. The thing was atrociously expensive, and if anything were to happen to it, he’d most likely lose his marbles. All of them. Holding the device up to his face and peering at one Harry Styles through the lens, he advises, “Whatever is most comfortable for you.”

_Click._

Unsurprisingly, the shots come out good. Really good, because just as Louis suspected, Harry is highly photogenic. He knows that he should change up the background or dim the lighting, just to have a little bit of variety in the shots. He thinks his teacher would like that.

Harry is getting along just fine, though. It’s like Louis’ Nikon has become his new best friend. He makes pouty faces with his eyebrows pulled down. He makes silly faces with his mouth stretched wide and the pink of his tongue on display. He jumps and twists his body in all these weird angles. At one point he’s just dancing all awkwardly to one of the many ever-changing songs streaming from the stereo, but the photos come out beautiful. All of them do. Louis has no idea how he does it, and also gives himself an internal pat on the back for choosing such a good model.

_Click._

“I have a confession.” Harry stops mid-pose a little while later. It’s been an hour or so of nonstop photo taking, and he’s got a nice sheen of sweat from exertion on his forehead and matting his curls a bit. His hands go limp briefly before he sticks them in the back pockets of his jeans, a little anxiously. Louis lowers the camera from his face and pretends – pretends so goddamn hard like he’s not bouncing on his heels to find out what this confession is – and waits for Harry to continue. The olive-eyed boy bites at the pink of his lips and finishes with a little bit of a stutter, “I’m really happy that you asked me to model for you.”

 _Don’t blush. Don’t blush. Don’t blush._ And in a pitiful attempt not to, Louis manages, “Why is that a confession?”

Harry doesn’t say anything for a minute; he just looks at Louis with slowly blinking eyes. But after a few heartbeats – and stuttering ones on Louis’ end – he finally breaks the silence, explaining, “Because I was thinking about just keeping it to myself.”

Louis lets out a breath of air that was supposed to be a laugh, and he raises the camera for a brief _click_ and a snapshot of Harry giving the camera lens thumbs up with two of his massive hands. Then he admits, “I have a confession too.”

“Hm?”

Louis contemplates a moment before he declares, “Your hair looks funny.”

Harry’s eyes get big. “What?”

“It’s all … fluffy on one side.” Louis giggles – oh my god, did he actually just giggle? – and he watches with amusement as Harry tries his best to fix the problem, running his hands all through his brown locks, trying to tuck some strands behind his ear. It’s not helping in the slightest, it still looks all poofy and adorably goofy, and before he realizes it, Louis is saying, “No, no. You’re making it worse. Let me.”

And before he realizes it, Louis is putting his camera back on its tripod. And before he realizes it, Louis is advancing across the space, closing the distance between Harry and him. And before he realizes it, Louis has his hands in Harry’s hair.

They’re soft, his curls. Really soft. And they smell like strawberries, which makes Louis fall in love with them even more, as if that was even possible. In fact, all of Harry smells like strawberries, like he rolled around in them or accidentally used his sister’s shampoo in the shower.

And while Louis is supposed to be fixing Harry’s hair, his gaze wanders south a bit – not south like _south_ south, cause that’d be weird – but just to Harry’s neck and chest area. The skin of his neck is creamy and pale, but it’s jazzed up with jewelry; a necklace with a paper airplane pendant attached. The pendant is right in the dip of Harry’s collarbones.  

Like he can sense Louis’ gaze burning a hole on his chest, Harry says, “It’s my favorite necklace.”  

Louis lets his hands release their hold of Harry’s head so he can graze his fingertips over the cold silver of the jewelry clipped around his neck. Tracing the lines of the paper plane, he mutters, “I figured. You wear it almost every day.”

That corner – the kissable one – of Harry’s mouth curves heavenward again and there’s a flash of fresh amusement in his eyes as he stares down at the other boy. “Do you stalk me, Louis?”

“ _No._ ” Louis says sternly, pressing his fingertips into the flesh of Harry’s collarbones to give him a playful shove, but honestly, he was too close and too tempted and too far gone with the younger boy being right in front of him to not touch. When he does, the fabric of Harry’s T-shirt shifts a little, and Louis’ eyes catch on something big and black and definitely inked on the other boy’s skin. “I didn’t know you had tattoos.”

“They’re my swallows.” Harry beams proudly, his smile luminescent. He eagerly tugs at the neckline of his shirt until his chest and his birds are full on display and _wow, Louis, no drooling on the floor, please. You just mopped._

“They’re gigantic.” Louis comments, biting his lip, and yeah, they really are huge. Two black birds – two black swallows – cover a great expanse of Harry’s chest, right beneath his collarbones (which are looking _exquisite_ this afternoon) and the lines of them are perfectly etched, colored over freckled, whitish skin. Louis’ just realized how much of a sucker he is for chest tattoos. He looks away, another girly attempt to hide his blush.

“Yeah, but I like ‘em like that.” Harry shrugs with a simple roll of his shoulders. And then he’s suddenly all beaming and bright eyes, prompting, “I’ve got more. Wanna see?”

And who is Louis Tomlinson to say no? So he agrees, “Sure.”

In a flash, Harry is taking off his shirt. Like, just grabbing at the hem without a care and then raising it up over his arms and then throwing it so it’s nothing but a heap of white fabric on the floor. He spreads his arms, exposing even the flesh on the underside. Louis tries not to stare in awe, but _wow_.

The tattoos are literally everywhere. Big ones, small ones, and they’re all inked in. They’re splattered all up and down his left arm, and there’s everything there Louis could possibly imagine. A star, song lyrics, a gigantic ship and the Green Bay Packers emblem, which Louis makes a mental note to ask about later.  They continue on his chest too. The swallows have company with the bolded words of 17BLACK. On the side of his ribs there’s a bird cage. His right arm looks mostly untouched, except for the words _Things I Can_.

All he can really manage to stammer out is, “Did they hurt?”

Harry nods, dipping his head down to look at all the tattoos himself, arms still spread wide. His hair falls into his eyes. “Like hell, but it was worth it.”

Louis makes a noise in the back of his throat. His eyes scan over the letter ‘A’ in the crease of his elbow, a hanger, a word in what looks to be Hebrew. “Why’ve you got so many?”

Harry looks back up, and his eyes have got that shine to them again. He lowers his arms and makes to fold them into himself like he’s suddenly feeling self-conscious. “I don’t know.”

And right there, when he folds his arms, Louis catches several more markings even lower on Harry’s left arm. He curls his fingers around the arm and brings it up close to his face for close examination. He tries to ignore the fact that Harry’s skin is very warm. “Even on your wrist?”

The other boy doesn’t say anything for a while, just stands there, breathing. Then, his words softer, he explains, “These are special.”

There are a lot of them there, too. The words _I can’t change_ , a shamrock, the Aquarius water symbol. And a padlock. They’re all fine and dandy, but for some reason, the padlock catches Louis’ eye more than any of the others. Very tentatively, he slides the hand he had wrapped around Harry’s arm so that it’s encircling his wrist. He brushes over the padlock gently with his thumb and asks, “What’s the lock for?”

“It’s … it’s actually one half of a couple tattoo.” When he says it, Harry sort of stumbles a bit around the words like they’re slippery in his mouth. Louis pulls back a little, but he’s still touching the lock, and really, really hopes that Harry doesn’t find it weird. But his heart beat quicken a little, because a _couple tattoo_? That means that someone’s got the other half; someone who isn’t Louis.

With a heavy heart and a slight cringe, he asks, “So, you’ve got a girlfriend?”

Almost at an instant, Harry shakes his head. “No.”

Scrunching up his face a bit in confusion, not understanding at all, Louis inquires, “So why did you get it if no one else has the other half?”

“Because I’m waiting.” The other boy says it while he’s visibly biting on the inside of his cheek, nervous. His hands are fully at his sides now, but his fingers are twitching like he wants to move them but can’t. Louis still has yet to let go of his wrist.

Harry’s eyes are all ablaze like emerald fire even though the light from the window has dimmed considerably. He’s still shirtless, the art of his body is still out on exhibit, and he looks so vulnerable. Vulnerable and open like Louis has never seen him before, because the Harry he’s used to is all popular and loud, never on time for class and has cookie crumbs on his shirt. This is a different Harry, a secret Harry, and he likes it. Somewhere, way, way in the back of his mind, he thinks that maybe they should get back to what they originally came here to do, which is take pictures. But Louis’ too far gone now, too intrigued. He goads, “For what?”

And then Harry says, leaning in and crowding into Louis’ space, “My key.”

It should be a surprise when Harry kisses him, and it is, it really is. But Louis doesn’t exactly have time right now to be all shocked because Harry fucking Styles is tugging on his bottom lip with his teeth, so.

He obliges to the other boy’s silent wishes and parts his lips to let Harry’s tongue pass through immediately. Harry’s hands instantly tug away from Louis’ grip only so that he can slide his palms over the arch of the small of Louis’ back instead, skin warm. Louis’ fingers lace themselves in Harry’s hair again, this time lightly scraping his fingernails across the scalp and down towards the nape of the neck. He’s rewarded by not only a muffled moan from the other boy, but a shiver too.

Harry presses a little closer then, licking hot into the other boy’s mouth. He moves from the small of Louis’ back to let his hands journey to the sides until his thumbs are pressing hard into hipbones. The motion makes Louis hips jerk deliciously against Harry’s.

The break apart only to breathe, but they don’t move far. Their hips are still aligned – or, as aligned as the height difference between the boys allows them, because Harry may be younger, but his growth spurt surely hit him harder – and they’re practically panting into each other’s mouths. Lips bruised dark red and looking absolutely wrecked, Harry says croakily, “I have another confession.”

Trailing his wandering fingers down the curve of Harry’s spine and being rewarded again with a shiver, Louis inquires, “Yeah?”

With this adorable little blush to his cheeks (and this is the part where Louis’ heart stutters because he’s never seen Harry blush before and he’d most certainly love to see it more), Harry whispers almost inaudibly, “I’ve been waiting for this moment for like … ever.”

Louis’ eyebrows nearly reach his hairline because this most certainly cannot be real life right now. Sure, Harry just kissed him – or, rather, _is_ kissing him – but he had thought it was some spur of the moment thing. Something that just came on due to Louis’ constant questions and how close their bodies were. He’d never thought that this was something that Harry had thought about, something he had been _waiting_ for. Before the day that they’d first spoken to each other, he had thought that Harry had no idea who he even _was_. Making sure this is all not some elaborate, cruel joke being played on him, Louis demands, “Seriously?”

“Seriously.” Harry manages to get out breathlessly but so sincerely before Louis’ mouth his covering his again and he’s almost forced to swallow his words.

And if Harry is the lock, Louis doesn’t think he’d mind being the key.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for this. Woke up at four AM yesterday morning with these crazy feelings about Harry's tattoos and I couldn't let the idea escape from me. Hope you enjoyed! :) 
> 
> P.S., I am not a photographer, so I Googled a lot of stuff about it. I apologize for any inaccuracies and if I offended any actual photographers with my lack of knowledge on the subject.


End file.
